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Tuesday, 4 February 2014

Labour Cannot Be Trusted

Labour cannot be trusted to build a stronger economy. They crashed the economy and have no answers on how to create jobs and get the economy growing.

‘There’s no money left’ – Labour nearly bankrupted Britain. We are cleaning up their mess

Labour let the banks run wild. They cosied up to gamblers in the City of London and left us all with a huge bill when the banks collapsed

Labour’s numbers don’t add up. Their extra spending and unfunded tax cuts would break their own debt rules and add £201bn to the UK’s debt for our children and grandchildren to pay off (source: IFS)

Research shows that Labour have made £27.9bn of unfunded spending commitments in the three months since Ed Miliband committed to ‘discipline on borrowing’

Despite scaremongering for years, they have been proved wrong. Wrong on the economy. Wrong that unemployment would soar. Time and time again Ed Miliband has been called upon to make a decision and time and time again he has ducked it. He has no answers to some of the biggest questions facing the country:

Where do Labour stand on the economy?

Where do Labour stand on welfare?

Where do Labour stand on Europe?

What is the Labour policy on schools?

What is the Labour policy on the NHS?

Labour wants to get back into Government in eighteen months, yet the sum total of their plan seems to be a single promise to temporarily freeze energy bills. As always, if it sounds too good to be true, it is: the energy companies would simply hike up prices before and after the freeze and Labour could do nothing to stop them.

But even worse is what this promise says about Labour.

They honestly believe that they can walk back into Downing Street with a giveaway here, a gimmick there, but no credible economic strategy. Do you know why Ed Miliband suddenly wants to talk about the cost of living?

Because they’ve lost the bigger economic argument. Where are the million lost jobs they predicted? Or the flatlining GDP? Where is the double-dip recession that never happened? Or - as David Blunkett warned - the post-Soviet meltdown?

Plan A hasn’t failed, it’s working. And the truth is that healthy household budgets flow directly from a healthy economy. The two go hand in hand. The Labour Party can carrying on lecturing us all on fairness, but you cannot magically create a fairer society without bothering to build a stronger economy.

So don’t be fooled again: you cannot afford Labour. Let loose in government on their own they would wreck the recovery – costing jobs, driving up interest rates and undermining the growth needed to cut tax bills and fund public services. They cannot be allowed to undo all of the sacrifices that have been made and everything that has been achieved – the British people would pay the price.